India: Politics needs to veer away from religious identity says editorial in The Times of India ( 4 Jan 2019)

The Times of India

Election fever: Politics needs to veer away from religious identity and attend to the economy instead

January 4, 2019, 2:00 am IST TOI Edit in TOI Editorials | Edit Page, India, politics | TOI

While the political class is preoccupied with Ayodhya, Sabarimala, cows and “lollipops” like farm loan waivers, the economy is crying for attention. On the back of US-China trade battles, global headwinds are rife with grave uncertainties. On the domestic front there are prickly portents. CMIE data show that investments have plunged to a 14-year low, with a fall seen across all the major sectors. In the just-ended December quarter new private sector projects fell 64% compared to the previous year. The long awaited turnaround in private investments – essential to usher in ‘acche din’ – now seems further away than ever.

Clearly there is no room for complacency – the economy needs assiduous stewardship, both in the Centre and states. Earlier in December the monetary policy committee had underlined the need to strengthen domestic macroeconomic fundamentals, with fiscal discipline being critical to crowd in private investment activity. Yet, farm loan waivers are being cavalierly brandished across the political spectrum, even as GST collections have been slowing.

Thus fiscal health is once again threatened by election fever, which has been accompanied by shrilly divisive posturing around religious identity. In Sabarimala the religious conversation between traditionalists and reformists has been hijacked by politics – triggering violence and a Kashmir-style statewide shutdown in Kerala. On Ayodhya, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi has stated that the judicial process should be allowed to take its course, there is no letup on Sangh Parivar demands for bypassing due process and establishing a temple at the site of the demolished mosque right away, precluding any rational compromise on the matter and invoking the spectre of a ghastly rerun of religious riots that convulsed the country in 1992-93.

The freak mutations caused by the hijacking of religion by politics are nowhere more visible than in the country’s cattle economy. Where from time immemorial a cultural affection for cows happily coexisted with trade in cattle as a lynchpin of the agrarian economy, a spate of lynchings combined with government policies restricting cattle trade have taken a heavy commercial toll, crippling the trade, rendering cattle a liability, to be let loose on farms, health centres and schools. In a desperate measure to square this circle the Yogi Adityanath government has cleared a ‘cow cess’ in Uttar Pradesh, amounting to a further tax on a poor state’s economy. It is a serious mistake to think that harping on identity issues can win elections. BJP’s recent reverses in three heartland states suggest that voters do care about a misfiring economy.
This piece appeared as an editorial opinion in the print edition of The Times of India.